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SYNTHETICS

At some point in the game players are going to want to introduce a Synthetic character. There is a mistaken belief that these are somehow "better" than humans. This should be discouraged. At no point have we seen them be more resiliant, stronger, or smarter. They can be faster at practiced tasks but they do not perform with 100% accuracy [Bishop cut his finger while doing "that thing with the knife", Aliens].

Synthetics, or Aritficial Humans as they prefer to be called, are an extremely expensive and rare resource. It is usually the case that it is cheaper to employ a team of humans for a task than to purchase a single Synthetic. So for a player to choose a Synthetic, they must have an extremely good reason. They must also recognise they are almost exclusively property belonging to a human (PC or NPC) with no rights of their own.

Below is a list of the three Android makes available to players. Not that each has strenghts and weaknesses that differ from each other. Most of this information is taken from glimpses given in the movies with a lot of conjectural padding to make it consistent.

Wayland Yutani and the United Systems Government investigated Synthetic personnel covertly and enlisted the aid of Hyperdine Systems to produce the first line of Androids. Ten were produced and given names ranging from Hyperdine System 01-1 to Hyperdine System 10-1. The "Ones" were sluggish and slow to respond and had a tendency to freeze and fail. However their potential did produce huge public interest in the more advanced type two.

The "Two’s" were remarkable. They appeared completely human, and even managed to mimic human emotions. However, only 215 of the original 1,000 were made, since those in production began to produce unusual psychological defects. All the units were recalled, but some were kept on for covert Company and Government work. Hyperdine Systems was dropped from the robotics project. [Ash was Hyperdine System 128-2, Alien].

Advantages:

• Their ability to blend in as completely human.

Disadvantages:

• They are prone to many of the human disadvantages, like fear, and many psychoses. The DM may at some point automatically take control of this character as it’s programming malfunctions.
• If their true identity is discovered they are automatically suspected by other characters.
• They cannot learn new Skills thought they can accrue new information and highly complicated Practiced Tasks.

Wayland Yutani took a new approach with the Bishop Consortium who designed the Bishop-A. The A’s were again an experimental model and did not function fully. Only 30 were made labelled Bishop 01-A to Bishop 30-A. The Type B were considered as perfect synthetics, or "Artificial Persons". They were standardised models with predetermined skills and strict behaviour modifier chips with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics hard wired in. The laws were altered slightly to the following:

1. A Synthetic may not, through action or inaction, allow avoidable loss of Human life to occur.
2. A Synthetic must follow orders of humans to the best of your ability comencerate with their rank on your personnel and owners log files, and while those orders are not in contradiction with the first directive.
3. A Synthetic must try to preserve it's own existence while doing so does not contraviene the first two directives.

They did not attempt to hide their identities and revelled in their position of service to humans. Everyone trusts a B, and there are no records of any sort of malfunction. It was the Bs that gave synthetics the reputation of being entirely logical beings. [Bishop 381-B, Ailens].

Advantages:

• They have up to 15 skill points to allocate at the conception of their character.
• They are extremely trustworthy and roll 1D6 for Courage checks.

Disadvantages:

• Because of their inability to allow a human to suffer through their inaction, they may be forced to sacrifice themselves to save the humans.
• Their skills are not chosen by the player. The player must either select one of the 6 standard models below, or allow the other players to allocate skills that they request in an android.
• They cannot learn new skills thought they can accrue new information and highly complicated Practiced Tasks.

With a wain in interest in the corporate sector for Synthetics a plan was developed to produce a Second Generation. The Second Gen, or Auton, was to be designed by robots, taking into account any failing in the previous model. It is rumoured that Bishop 381-B was salvaged and used on the project. Each was implanted with a remote modem that allowed them to access "The Mainframe", the place where all government knowledge was stored. Instead of the strict behaviour modifiers, the 2nd Gen were programmed to "care". They have a very high moral code, and may even become ministers, though this is not recognised by most humans.

The reasons why the project failed is unclear. It was certain that the Auton’s resented being forced by humans to do things. It is also known that they accessed the secure files where every little covert operation the Government had dreamed of was detailed. The Government got frightened and ordered a complete recall. Most of the units were destroyed, but a few, a very small few, made it out intact. It is believed they are responsible in part for the sudden flood of knowledge about covert Company and Government operations.

Because they are so wanted they will never reveal their true identity, and even if it is discovered will take extreme measures not to have to do anything "synthetic", since they consider themselves to be disgusting. They have also burned their remote modems so they can no longer remotely contact the main frame but can still be hard wired like the earlier models. [Call, Alien4].

Advantages:

• Their ability to blend in as completely human.
• They have up to 15 skill points to allocate at the conception of their character.
• They are extremely trustworthy and roll 1D6 for Courage checks.
• They have a greater ability to learn skills and complicated tasks.
• There are no occupations that they are restricted from since they act as humans.

Disadvantages:

• They must "care" about the people around them. They adopt a group of associates as Family.
• Knowledge of their true identity is worth thousands of credits, and they will be turned in by most people.
• Any official that discovers their identity will attempt to terminate them.